Elizabeth Bowen

Elizabeth Bowen was an Irish-British novelist and short story writer who was born in Dublin in 1899. She spent her early childhood in Dublin and at her father's family home, Bowen's Court, in County Cork. When her father became mentally ill in 1907, she moved to England with her mother, who died in 1912. She was educated at Downe House School and began writing short stories at the age of 20. Her first book, Encounters, was published in 1923. In 1923, she married Alan Cameron, an educational administrator who worked for the BBC. The marriage was reportedly never consummated, and Bowen had various extra-marital relationships, including one with Charles Ritchie, a Canadian diplomat, that lasted over 30 years. She also had an affair with the Irish writer Seán Ó Faoláin and a relationship with the American poet May Sarton. Bowen mixed with the Bloomsbury Group and became good friends with Rose Macaulay, who helped her find a publisher for her first novel, The Hotel, in 1927. Bowen wrote several novels and short stories that are notable for their finely wrought prose style and their depiction of uneasy and unfulfilling relationships among the upper-middle class. She often wrote about the "big house" of Irish landed Protestants and the history and culture of Ireland, as well as about life in wartime London. Some of her most acclaimed works include The Last September (1929), The House in Paris (1935), The Death of the Heart (1938), The Heat of the Day (1949), and Eva Trout (1968). She also wrote essays, reviews, and autobiographical fragments. She was a member of the Irish Academy of Letters and received several awards and honours, including the CBE in 1948 and the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters from Trinity College, Dublin, in 1949. She died of lung cancer in London in 1973, at the age of 73. She left Bowen's Court to the Irish state, but it was demolished in 1960. Her papers are held at the University of Texas at Austin and at the University of Reading.